Ayana Coles, rights, sits with students at Eagle Creek Elementary School. At Eagle Creek, students of color make up 77 percent of the student body, and all but four of the school’s 37 staff are white. Coles has led conversations about race with colleagues throughout the year. (Peter Balonon-Rosen/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
INDIANAPOLIS — As Ayana Coles gazed at the 20 teachers gathered in her classroom, she knew the conversation could get uncomfortable. And she was prepared.
“We are going to experience discomfort — well, we may or may not experience it — but if we have it that’s OK,” said Coles, a third grade teacher at Eagle Creek Elementary School in Indianapolis.
At Eagle Creek, students of color make up 77 percent of the student body. All but four of the school’s 37 staff are white. Throughout this past year, Coles has led a series of after-school discussions with teachers about race.
“We talked about unquestioned assumptions,” Coles said to her colleagues at the meeting. “Like some parents or groups of people have no value of education, or their parents are uneducated, their parents don’t have money.”
Her goal? Create a common understanding of race and power, with the hopes that teachers acknowledge, then address how that plays out in the school.
But getting there means first exploring often-taboo topics: race, power and teachers’ biases. Continue Reading →
A lower percentage of students passed Indiana’s required third grade reading test on their first try.
The Department of Education released preliminary results from this year’s IREAD-3 exam, which show 83.8 percent of third graders passed on their first try. Last year, the percentage was 84.2.
IREAD-3 is a standardized test assessing third graders’ reading ability, and it is separate from ISTEP+.
More students took the test this year, 1,575, which may have had an impact on the passing rate. And the rate could go up, as students can retake the test in the summer. After unsuccessful students had the chance to take last year’s test a second time, that passing rate jumped to 87.4 percent.
If a third grader doesn’t pass the IREAD reading test the second time, they will have to retake third grade versions of the ISTEP and IREAD exams the following school year. State officials say these students will probably also be held back from entering fourth grade.
Final passage results will be available at the end of the summer.
State superintendent Glenda Ritz and Democratic candidate for governor John Gregg want to create a universal pre-k program in the state. ” credit=”Claire McInerny (Indiana Public Broadcasting)
INDIANAPOLIS — Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg and state superintendent Glenda Ritz detailed their proposal for universal pre-K Thursday. Universal pre-k would be free for all 4 year-olds, not just those from low income families.
Ritz will run for re-election in November, and the two Democratic candidates proposed the plan last week.
The state’s current pre-K pilot program, On My Way Pre-K, gives pre-K scholarships to certain families who have incomes up to 127 percent of the federal poverty level — about $31,000 for a family of four.
Ritz said she wants the program to be available for all students.
“Middle income families affording daycare and pre-K, it’s a stress on their budgets,” Ritz said.
On My Way Pre-K requires families to apply, and approval takes time. Some have identified this process as a barrier. Ritz said more students will enroll in pre-K if it’s universal.
The plan she and Gregg support would cost the state an estimated $150 million a year. The money would be allocated to 289 public schools with preschool programs.
Ritz said the Department of Education will propose this program to the legislature during the 2017 General Assembly, which is a budget year.
Gregg said this program is good education policy and hopes Republicans in the legislature recognize that.
“My fear is if you just make it income weighted, they think this is just another one of these government programs, that they would call welfare programs, and it’s not, it’s education,” Gregg said.
The program would not require families to enroll their child in preschool.
In terms of funding, both Ritz and Gregg said the state has money for the program. Their plan would pool dollars from state and federal funds, and could use money currently spent on assessment, if the ISTEP+ panel chooses a cheaper option.
Governor Pence signed the state’s current On My Way Pre-K pilot program into law in 2013. The pilot program does not have a long term funding, as its effects are currently being studied. The program launched last year in five counties.
Eight Indiana schools will receive state grant money to begin or expand their own dual language immersion programs. (Photo Credit: Nathan Moorby/Flickr)” credit=”Nathan Moorby/Flickr
The Department of Education announced Wednesday the latest group of schools that will receive state money to create or expand dual language immersion programs, adding three new schools to five already existing grant-funded programs.
The goal of dual language immersion programs is to teach students to become bilingual by teaching 50 percent of their lessons in English and 50 percent in another language. These usually begin in kindergarten or first grade and ideally continue throughout elementary school.
The following schools received grants Wednesday, and the ones in bold are new recipients:
Batesville Primary (Batesville Community School Corp.)
Global Prep Academy
Waterford Elementary (Goshen Community Schools)
Landis Elementary (Logansport Community School Corp.)
Batesville Primary School received one of the first grants last year and will enroll their first class of kindergartners in its Mandarin dual language immersion program this fall. Batesville Primary principal Heather Haunert says she spent the last year conducting research on successful Mandarin programs around the country. This included traveling to Seattle, Wash. and Portland, Ore. to see how Mandarin programs there were run.
Haunert says her school chose Mandarin because of a few businesses in Batesville with Chinese connections, but also because they wanted to provide a unique experience for students in the overwhelmingly white school.
“We’re just in such a small, tiny little pocket that it’s important for them to realize that there’s a big huge world out there and they need to have as many experiences as they can,” Haunert said.
After a year of researching and planning their program, Haunert says it was exciting to receive money for another year, but they are also planning how to maintain the program after state funding runs out. They hope to have one dual language Mandarin class at grade level, through fifth grade.
Waterford Elementary in Goshen Community Schools was one of three schools that received its first state dual language immersion program grant this week. It will launch a Spanish dual-language immersion program, and will follow a two-way immersion model. This means in addition to half of the instruction being in Spanish, half of the students will also be native Spanish speakers.
Unlike Batesville, Goshen schools enroll more 51 percent Latino students, many of them speaking Spanish. Their program will not only help English speakers learn a new language, but native Spanish speakers maintain their original language while practicing English.
Karen Blaha, Goshen English Language Learner director, said the fact that non-Latino families want their students to learn Spanish is encouraging.
“When I hear those comments from families who are native English speakers, to me shows that there is an interest for the whole dual language with the Spanish and English,” Blaha said.
Blaha says her district will spend this next year developing the curriculum for the program and preparing for its official launch in the 2017-2018 school year.
The panel that is re-writing the ISTEP+ met for the second time Tuesday. photo credit: (David Hartman /Flickr)
The state’s ISTEP panel met for the second time Tuesday, with much of the discussion focusing on what the vision for the new assessment is. Many panel members struggled to agree on a shared goal.
The panel, established during the 2016 General Assembly, meets every month until December 2016 and will design a new state assessment to replace the ISTEP+. The 23-person panel is comprised of educators, legislators, state agency heads and business leaders.
At the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting, Marilyn Moran-Townsend, CEO of CVC Communications, said the group must have a goal for the assessment before digging into issues of technology, format and contract processes. This suggestion turned out to be complicated for much of the group.
Many of the educators that spoke up during the discussion, including Ft. Wayne Community Schools superintendent Wendy Robinson, want to have a more philosophical conversation about what this test would measure and what the state wants to know about student academic achievement.
“I just don’t want to get into the weeds until I’m clear that everybody on this committee, we’re all focused on the same thing,” Robinson said. “Teachers don’t want to get rid of testing, they just want to make sure what you’re having them spend valuable time on is actually going to help them change practice to get to proficiency, because that’s the goal.”
Scot Croner, superintendent of Blackford County Schools, brought up a specific goal he wants the panel to discuss. He says whenever the subject of testing has come up in recent years, people involved in the conversation say they want it to test if a student is ready for college or career. But how that actually plays out isn’t equal. He says students in his district’s welding program perform the worst on their End of Course Assessment with a 70 percent passage rate. But these same students have the highest passing rate for their industry exam, with 96 percent passing the welding exam. Which means they are ready for a career, but that’s not reflected on any state measurement.
“It’s mind numbingly painful to think we try to create these arbitrary tests that somehow measure college and career, when to my knowledge I think we know what college readiness means in the form of a test,” Croner said. ” It’s called the SAT and the ACT.”
While Croner and others wanted to have this vision set in stone before moving forward, many at the state level, including superintendent Glenda Ritz, Commissioner for Higher Education Teresa Lubbers and Representative Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, were more focused on the logistics of format, technology and selection of a test vendor.
But discussions around these issues didn’t take place today. Before adjourning, Chair Nicole Fama asked the other 22 panel members to email her their individual visions for the test.
The panel has six more meetings before the December deadline to submit their redesign plan.
A math teacher leads a lesson on mathematic inequalities at Charter School of the Dunes in Gary. On average, kids in charter schools outperform their traditional public school counterparts in both math and reading. — Photo: Kyle Stokes/StateImpact Indiana
The state Board of Education has scheduled five public hearings for schools in Indianapolis, Gary, East Chicago and Evansville that have been placed in the lowest category of school improvement for five straight years.
Wednesday, June 15: Phalen Leadership Academy at Key School 103 (Indianapolis)
Wednesday, July 13: Lodge Elementary School (Evansville)
Wednesday, July 20: Kilmer School 69 (Indianapolis)
Wednesday, August 10: Beveridge Elementary (Gary)
Thursday, August 11: Block Junior High (East Chicago)
New data from the Department of Education provides a snapshot of civl rights in U.S. schools. Indiana schools use suspension more often than most of the nation’s schools. (Eric Castro/Flickr)” credit=”
Every two years the U.S. Department of Education collects civil rights data on all public schools and school districts in the United States. This week the department released those numbers from the 2013-14 school year.
The Department of Education break down access and opportunities for students at every public school in country by gender, race and disability. Things like suspension, expulsion, absenteeism, juvenile justice facilities, officers in schools, restraint, seclusion, college readiness and more.
Much, much more.
That means it’s A LOT of data. So much, that downloading the spreadsheet would, for instance, use up this whole month’s cellular data plan.
So you don’t have to use up your data — and maybe crash your computer, like we did — we’re going through those numbers for you. Continue Reading →
On average, U.S. schools send home about one in 16 students. Indiana schools choose exclusionary discipline more often, sending home one in 14 students.
Boys, students of color and students with disabilities absorb the brunt of Indiana’s 75,000 suspensions.
Schools suspend students with disabilities at twice the rate of their peers. And while black students make up about 12 percent of school enrollment, they make up 34 percent of total suspensions. Continue Reading →
For Sara Draper, teaching second grade was a long, slow journey– she likens it to running a marathon.
“It starts out and you’re feeling really great when you first start running, then by the middle you’re doing ok, you get some water,” she said. “By the end you’re exhausted but you think you can still make it because there’s only a few weeks left, or a few miles left.”
And after the last day of school, Draper had mixed emotions.
Draper’s confidence went up and down all year, and her perspective changed. When she graduated college, she says her expectations were idealistic.
“Every lesson is going to be life changing and exciting and they’re all going to be excited about it, but that’s just not realistic,” Draper said. “That can’t happen every minute of every day. It’s not always exciting and that’s something I had to get used to.”
Indiana’s top education official says the state has money available to offer preschool in all Indiana districts. (Barnaby Wasson/Flickr)
INDIANAPOLIS — State Superintendent Glenda Ritz wants to see preschool available to all Indiana kids — and says it should be at the front of lawmakers’ minds as they enter the 2017 legislative session.
The $150 million proposal to expand preschool in every district in the state would be less than one percent of the state’s annual budget, Ritz said. She says it’s among the Department of Education’s top policy priorities heading into the next legislative session.
“The Department will make high quality pre-K available within the boundaries of every school corporation in the state of Indiana by 2020,” Ritz said. “The funds are there if the political will exists.”
Indiana is one of only 13 states who doesn’t require school attendance until age 7. According to IDOE, one in 14 first graders never attend kindergarten or preschool — starting school later than their peers.
Ritz says statewide preschool can remedy this. Her plan wouldn’t require preschool, but it would provide free access to any family that wants it, regardless of income.
“We absolutely have to invest with our little ones,” Ritz said. “I want it open to all students who might want to attend a high-quality pre-K program.”
Ritz said the multimillion dollar proposal could comprise of public-private partnerships paid for from existing state funds, federal grants and private contributions.
In response to Ritz’s plan, Gov. Mike Pence says the state should focus funds on students with certain income qualifications, not all students. Under the state’s existing preschool pilot program, families are only eligible if they have incomes up to 127 percent of the federal poverty level — about $31,000 for a family of four.
“When it comes to disadvantaged kids the benefits of opening doors of access to early childhood education is very significant,” Pence said. “And that’s where we’ll focus.”
Pence also said under any state-funded preschool program, students should be able to use those resources in public, private or faith-based preschool programs.
Ritz’s announcement comes days after Pence indicated that he’s interested in seeking federal funds to expand statewide preschool. Pence’s move was a reversal from a 2014 decision when he stopped the Indiana Department of Education from applying for an $80 million grant that would have established a similar system.
Ritz’s decision to lay out budget priorities seven months before the session begins is another unusual move in this election year.
“Regardless of the politics I plan to get this implemented,” Ritz said.
Ritz is up for re-election this November.
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